


Attack of the...coincidences?

by Whov1an562



Category: Class (TV 2016), Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Sarah Jane Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2018-12-20 07:13:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 5,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11915820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whov1an562/pseuds/Whov1an562
Summary: Clara's cousin Ellie Waterhouse has known the Doctor all her life. Rose Tyler was her babysitter when Ellie met the Doctor during an incident with some 'scary green fat men' when she was five, but has found that she keeps bumping into the Doctor through people that she knows, so the Doctor decides to keep his eye on this fiery tempered teenager. Why does this keep happening? Will she ever find out why the universe keeps bringing her and the Doctor into the same place at the same time, and will she ever be able to forgive the Doctor for her friends and family getting hurt all the time? Only time will tell...References to/brief re-writes of Series 1-present.





	1. July 2007, The Battle of Canary Wharf

July 2007 the Battle of Canary Wharf

 

  
“Stay inside. WHATEVER YOU DO, stay inside”, Ellie heard a man screaming as he ran down the street, bellowing at the houses.  
Her mum was pacing, up and down the hallway, frantically making phone calls whilst Ellie and her brothers and sisters were in the living room, watching the news.

  
“Children”, her mother said as she entered the room, struggling to keep back the tears. “Rose is dead”.

  
Ellie felt like a dagger had been plunged through her heart. Rose had been her babysitter since she was born.

  
“Was it the metal men?” Daisy, her sister asked, on the brink of tears. Ellie’s mum nodded, before letting out a great sob.

  
Ellie wandered if the Doctor had saved the day, if that was why there were no more of the “Cybermen”, as he had called them once.

  
“Is anyone else hurt?” she asked.

  
“I am still waiting to hear back from Uncle Dave and Clara”.

  
Ellie had hoped that they were okay… her aunt and her mum had been so close before her aunt had died that she had her Aunt’s name, and Clara, her cousin, was her mum’s middle name. Ellie was the closest to Clara out of all her siblings, so sat fidgeting for half an hour, ignoring the news, before her mother made the announcement that their family was "safe". Ellie knew that no one was ever safe, the Doctor had told her this before, but it was a relief to know that her family was safe from imminent danger.

  
She wondered how the Doctor was doing...was she ever going to see him again?


	2. August 2013, Clara steps into the Doctor's Timestream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After her cousin Clara steps into the Doctor's time stream, Ellie thinks about what is coming next.

August 2013  
Ellie stepped into the TARDIS with Vastra, Jenny and Strax. She felt physically sick, and really, really angry. How could Clara have just left her like that? Yes, she did understand that the Doctor really couldn’t die and that he had saved too many lives so couldn’t really die at every possible moment in his timestream, but, the way she saw it at that moment, if he wasn’t there, then Rose wouldn’t be trapped in that parallel universe (a top secret piece of information that she was very relieved to hear after calling the Doctor a few weeks after the Battle of Canary Wharf), and she would still be able to look Donna in the eye when her Gran met up with Sylvia and the family, her boyfriend’s brother and his wife would not be trapped in America in the last century and…

  
Ellie mentally slapped herself, realising that she was being stupid. She was simply angry that Clara had been the price to pay, but she dreaded the moment that she would have to look her family in the eye and admit that she had been lying to her family for years, and that she would have to explain to them how the ‘friend of the Williams’ was actually a time travelling alien and that she had run away with him for adventures…

 

And then she would have to explain to her younger brothers and sisters that she had watched their cousin step into a light that was going to kill her, and then she would have to explain that it was not a light but in fact a time stream... and that she could have stopped Clara but she didn’t...and then she realised that she was probably never going to see her family again because she was now trapped in Victorian London over a century before she was born with a Silurian, a Sontaran and Jenny (who was very kind), but who she had only met twice. She wandered if she would ever get home...


	3. February 1893/(August 2013(ish))

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor lands in Victorian London after three months of Ellie thinking that she would never see her family again.

February 1983  
Ellie had been in Victorian London for 3 months. She had adjusted to life (just), and was even starting to develop a slight cockney accent, when suddenly, she felt the ground start to shake. She rushed to the window, and saw a dinosaur (no, really, a dinosaur), making its way through the streets of London! She ran into the street, following Jenny, Vastra and Strax, and watched as Vastra talked to a policeman, and then followed them to the next street, where she saw a familiar blue box, covered in some kind of goo. The feeling of relief encircled her, as she ran up to the box and wrapped its arms around it. This was her ride home!

  
“Stand out of the way, girl”, Strax murmured angrily. Ellie felt very offended, as Strax must have actually thought that she was a boy in order to call her girl. Sure, she had cut off most of her hair with the kitchen scissors after being told that she looked a lot like her [non identical] triplet sisters, so had cut off a foot and a half of hair so as to look like an individual, but she still looked like a girl...right?

  
Out of the TARDIS came a very confused and angry Scotsman. “Sleepy?” he asked, direting the question at Strax, then proceeding to list many other dwarf names, and then bounding over to Vastra and Jenny and commenting on Vastra’s green-ness and how Jenny was the ‘Not green one”.

  
Ellie listed the possibilities of who this strange man could be. Companion? No, too strange. Alien pirate? No, not even an alien pirate could be this strange, which left only one option. He had regenerated, again.

***

 

The Doctor((?)) turned around and pointed towards the TARDIS, and said “You remember..thingy. The not me one”.

  
Out of the TARDIS came a very tired and disheveled Clara. Ellie’s jaw dropped, and her eyebrows became inflamed. She felt her temper coming on, and had no plans to try and reign it back.

  
“WHERE THE PHILIP WERE YOU?” She screamed, using Philip so that Clara knew that she was very angry. “YOU LEFT ME HERE! I WAS ALL ALONE. HOW COULD YOU DO THAT? JUMPING INTO HIS TIMESTREAM...COULD’VE GOT YOURSELF KILLED, I WAS ALONE…”Ellie took a deep breath, after realising that she’d stopped making sense.

  
“Busy...week. How come you’re here?” She wheezed. “You’ve been avoiding me since August…”

  
Ellie then realised that the Doctor would put her back where she last was, and Clara in hers, a few months later. Ellie would have to keep her mouth shut for months to avoid foreknowledge...a very dangerous thing…

  
Ellie gulped “I’m sorry” back behind a tear, and ran forward and hugged her cousin out of disbelief and relief, before the Doctor got into a brief debate with Clara about her name, and turned around and piercingly looked at Ellie through massive eyebrows.

  
Ellie was not entirely sure what was going on, but was relieved that the Doctor was here and that Clara was alive...and she knew that she was going to get home. She was safe...or as safe as one can be when one’s oldest friend is a time-travelling, monster fighting alien.


	4. March 2008 Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie calls the Doctor, set after Smith and Jones

March, 2008  
Ellie was sitting in her bedroom that she shared with her triplet sisters. Felicity and Daisy were identical, but had different birthdays, but Ellie shared her birthday with Felicity, and Daisy was born a few minutes after midnight, Ellie was not entirely sure what had happened. As far as her family and everyone else was concerned, Rose Tyler, shop assistant and occasional babysitter of the Waterhouse family was dead.

Ellie was almost certain that the Doctor had played a part in the event that had come to be known as ‘The Battle of Canary Wharf’, but she was not entirely sure what had happened. There had been practically nothing on the news since, which was strange, as aliens had invaded the Earth, and more recently, there had been a disappearing hospital which magically appeared again, so Ellie thought that it was probably a good idea to call the Doctor.

Her gran was babysitting that night, as her parents were out at parents evening for her brother Hugo. Ellie took the phone, and entered the Doctor’s number which he had given to her for “EMERGENCIES only”, as Ellie had found aliens twice without him, so the Doctor had thought that it was a good idea that she had his number.

The phone rang for a while, before a voice came through the other end of the phone. “Hel-lo?”

“Doctor? It’s me, Ellie.”

“Don’t tell me. Sontarans perverting the course of human history? Again?”

Ellie was slightly confused, so replied with a slow ‘Ermmm...No. Nothing unusual at the moment, It’s just that recently...there was a battle between the Cybermen and the...Daleks, was it?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone, before, finally, the Doctor came out with a “Yes”.

“What happened to Rose? We checked the death list and her name was on it.”

There was another silence before the Doctor said “She got trapped in another dimension. There was no way for me to save her. Jackie too.” Another pause followed. “I’m sorry”.

Ellie smiled. She realised that this must have been terrible for the Doctor, but at least Rose wasn’t dead. “Are you okay, Doctor?” She said, trying to hide the slight tone of happiness in her voice.

“I was on my way to the past, you know, got to keep busy, you know what I’m like!”

“When in the past?” She asked, hoping that it would be the days of the ancient Romans, for she had always wanted to see them.  
“No, Shakespeare’s day.”

“I’m meant to be doing a project on him at the moment! I haven’t started it yet, though.”

“Do you want to hitch a lift? Maybe it will give you some...inspiration.”

Ellie considered briefly for a moment, before breaking out into a massive smile. “My gran’s babysitting and she’s a bit deaf so you can park the TARDIS in the garden!”

“Relative time 10 minutes?”

 

“Brilliant!”

Ellie packed a bag, putting in a spare change of clothes and a jumper, a notebook, a pencil and a disposable camera. She wasn’t sure quite how long she’d be, and she’d certainly never seen any children’s clothes in the TARDIS!

She heard that all too familiar wheezing sound, so ran down the stairs, through the kitchen and quietly shut the back door...


	5. March 2008 Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Ellie meets Martha in the TARDIS and realises that she knows her from somewhere else, she starts to realise that something isn't quite right.

March 2008

Ellie swung open the TARDIS doors, to be greeted by a familiar woman. She wracked her brain to try and figure out where she’d seen her…

“Martha?” Ellie asked.

“Ah, so you two know each other then?” The Doctor asked.

“I’ve been giving her school First Aid classes for the past month”, Martha replied, with a slight frown on her face. “Does your mother know that you’re here?”

 

“Not exactly…”

“And by that... you mean…”

 

“No.”

“She keeps bumping into aliens, and she’s a bright spark, too. She’s helped me a few times...saved the world once…”

Ellie smiled, thinking back to when she had figured out that there had been a Toxinbruti invasion throughout all of the gardens England and had figured out that the way to stop them was to warn everyone to take their watering cans and put a compound of lemon juice and toothpaste on them, causing them to shrivel up rather than instantly reduce any humans that touched this hyper-intelligent alien plant species into ashes after a short but very painful death.

The Doctor continued with “Martha and I...We’ve saved the world from a blood-sucking Plasmavore that goes by the name of Frances Finnegan and now I’m taking her to Shakespearean London as a thank you”.

Ellie was angry. This is how it had happened last time, with Rose. “So you’re just replacing her then?” she angrily remarked. “After everything that happened with Rose, you’re just replacing her?”

The Doctor turned away guiltily and pulled a few levers, before proceeding to say “So...you knew Rose...and you know Martha”.

Ellie knew that getting angry with the Doctor now was pointless, as he would just push her out even further. “Yeah. Coincidence. Just what the Universe does for fun, I guess…”

“What the Universe does for fun... I like that”, he said. “I might use it again”. He paused for a second, and then chuckled to himself for a second before saying ‘I suppose you’ll be saying that you know a ‘Miss Donna Noble’ next!”, laughing to himself.

Ellie chuckled nervously, “That would be funny, wouldn’t it…”

Did Donna know the Doctor? She’d heard from her Gran, who was a great friend of Donna’s mother Sylvia, that there had been something sketchy about Donna’s wedding, but she had not asked any further questions…

But why? It hardly seemed possible that three people that she knew were friends of the Doctor… was it?


	6. December 2016, Ellie talks to April

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie talks to April after having lost contact for a year, and finds out something quite surprising...

Early December, 2016

Ellie was lying on her bed, listening to music when her phone started to ring. 

April MacLean

Pops up on the screen, with a picture of Ellie and April from when they were 14, pulling funny faces.

Ellie sighed. She hadn’t talked to April in a year, after they had got into a fight over something really stupid and insignificant that Ellie could barely remember. She reluctantly swiped

Answer

“Hello…” Ellie muttered quietly, hoping not to disturb her sisters who were working on a project.

“Hi…” April started. “I thi…”

“I’m really, really sorry, April”, Ellie interrupted.

“I’m sorry too”, April said, through a sob.

“What’s going on, April?” she asked her best friend from primary school. She’d managed to keep in contact (until the argument) with April after moving to near Gloucestershire with her family when she was 13, to a little town called Leadworth, which was a lot quieter than Shoreditch!

 

“The last few months...they’ve been crazy…you’re not going to believe me…”

“Try me. You’d be surprised what I’d believe”, Ellie said, thinking about everything that she had seen throughout her life since she was five and met the Doctor.

“Okay...well there’s...this thing...we call it the Bunghole of Time…”

“Wait, just one second…” Ellie said before rushing down the stairs, and into the garden. “I’m in the garden so we can properly talk”.

“There were these shadows, and then...people died...including Rachel...and then I had to share my heart with this evil monster...alien thingy called....a Shadow Kin...King Corakinus...and then this man turned up in his blue box…’

Ellie nearly dropped her phone. It couldn’t have been… Not that she knew any other space travelling men with a blue box that would turn up whenever the world was in danger…

“The Doctor, right?” Ellie asked.

“Yeah”, April said, through a sigh. “How did you know?”

“I’ve known him since I was five”, she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you…”

“And he made us the defenders of this...rip...in time and space…”

“It didn’t make anyone disappear when they stepped into the light did it?”

“No...it was just a...doorway...into other worlds, but a door that worked two ways...and you don’t know when it is going to open…”

“And he made YOU the protectors? Wait, who’s us?”

“Me, my mate Tanya, you wouldn’t know her, Ram? Do you remember Ram? And then this new boy called Charlie who is actually an alien and the last one of his kind, and then his boyfriend Matteusz”.

“What happened? When did this start?”

“September…”

“And why only call me now?!”

“I just needed someone outside of the situation…” She let out another sob.

“April? April, tell me what happened”.

“I’m trapped inside the body of a ‘Fire-type humanoid’, that’s what Quill said it was. My real body is dead... and let’s just say… it’s not really habitable any more”.

“I think I know how to fix you…”

“Please, anything...I haven’t left my house in a week, or talked to anyone apart from my mum”, she said, through another sob.

“We need the Doctor”, she said through gritted teeth. She hadn’t spoken to the Doctor since Clara had died, and she hadn’t been there. She gulped down a lump in her throat, because this was not about her and her grief over Clara, this was about April. “Call me when you’re back to your old self…”

She called the Doctor, reluctantly, who answered the phone with “Yes?”

“Doctor, it’s me… Ellie”.

“Oh, it’s you”, he said, grumpily. “Is this going to take a long time? It’s just that, you see, I’ve got this… thing I’m meant to be guarding… and I’m busy.”

“Doctor? What’s going on? Tell me!”

“Never mind. It’s not important. What do you want?”

“April called.”

“Ah, yes. I was… wondering… how they were doing… what did she say?”

“Doctor, what on EARTH were you doing, leaving a bunch of teenagers to guard a RIP IN THE FABRIC OF SPACE AND TIME?”

“It’s not so much of a rip as a tear, really…”

 

“In a school, Doctor. All of those lives… why didn’t you just do that THING that you do and FIX IT?”

“I was busy that day. I think it was a Friday… things get busy on Fridays… but it might not have been...”

“STOP CHANGING THE SUBJECT FOR ONCE AND FIX APRIL WHO IS TRAPPED IN THE BODY OF A SHADOW KIN!!!”

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Ellie sat down, not having realised she’d got off the bench in the first place. She was confused...and slightly worried… This was just one coincidence too far... 

How did her best friend end up as a protector of Earth? Or at least one designated by THAT man...


	7. November 2015 - Clara's Funeral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A distraught Ellie attends Clara's funeral

November 2015 - Clara’s Birthday

Ellie was in church. It was a Monday. And her Uncle (if he could even be called that anymore… her aunt was dead and now her cousin had joined her…) had decided that the best day to celebrate Clara’s life was what would have been her 30th birthday, two weeks after her death. 

Ellie felt sick. She hadn’t felt as sick as this for over two years, actually, thinking about it, the last time that she thought that Clara had died. Except, this time, it seemed twenty times worse, as there was no hope. She was sitting here, at Clara’s funeral.

She walked up to her best friend, April, who seemed to be blinking back the tears as well. April was in her school uniform, along with about forty other students from the school that Clara taught at.

“You managed to get the day off school then?” Ellie asked, 

“Yeah”, April replied. “We have a half day so that anyone who wants to come today can. I’m speaking on behalf of the school… I have literally no clue if what I am going to say is okay. I’m trying really, really hard not to say something that is going to make everyone feel even worse, but I’m trying not to say that it wasn’t as awful as it is… it’s harder than one would think… I’m not really sure if it’s okay…” Ellie raised an eyebrow at her friend, before April said “I’m rambling again…”

Ellie let out a half hearted chuckle before April was beckoned by one of her teachers to take her place with the school.

Ellie was in the second row, along with her siblings. She turned around, and saw Rigsy with a small child. She hadn’t seen Rigsy since Clara had introduced him to her at her birthday party the year before. Ellie couldn’t believe that this was only a year ago…and in such different circumstances…

Rigsy looked grief-stricken, and like he had hardly slept for weeks. The Doctor had mentioned in his note that Rigsy said ‘sorry’, so the sleep deprivation might not be entirely due to the child.

Two rows behind Rigsy was Kate, with an Osgood either side of her. Ellie wished for a second that Bonnie (or ‘Evil Clara’ as she and the original had jokingly named her afterwards) could take the appearance of Clara again, if only so that she could have an opportunity to say good-bye, and more importantly sorry… she had had an argument with Clara before the mysterious death, Ellie had been cross with Clara because she was becoming too reckless, but now she wanted to apologise… but then she realised that she was being stupid. There was only one Clara Oswald… she had bumped into an echo of Clara when in Victorian London and had assumed that she was a relative of some sort, but before she had the opportunity to bring this up with the Doctor, he had found the original and they were off having adventures, leaving Ellie feeling even more confused as to why people she knew kept travelling with the Doctor.

She looked over to the other side of the church, where she saw, hiding behind the students, none other than Missy. I hope that she doesn’t cause too much trouble… Ellie thought to herself. But she turned around quickly, for she wouldn’t like to see a confrontation between Osgood and Missy after the plane incident…  
***

It was time for the eulogy. April was there to say a few words on behalf of Coal Hill School, and it was Clara’s father Dave to say the eulogy.

Ellie was in tears by the end of April’s speech. April had talked about “Miss Oswald”, which was strange, as Clara had started working in her old school later on in the year she had moved to Leadworth, so Ellie was (or had not been now) not familiar with ‘Miss Oswald the Teacher’.

By the end of “Uncle” Dave’s speech, Ellie wanted to get away so badly. She wanted the Doctor to turn up in his blue box, and take her off on an adventure, just like he used to. Anything to take her mind off Clara.

Maybe, if she could speak to the Doctor, then she could get some answers. Clara’s father had not revealed the circumstances of Clara’s death to anybody except Ellie’s parents and Clara’s gran. Ellie’s parents refused to say anything, and Ellie had no plans to explain her many encounters with aliens to her parents, on the off-chance that they wouldn’t tell her anyway, and she didn’t feel right asking Clara’s gran. Outwardly, she seemed to have taken it the worst out of everyone at the funeral, and she barely knew the woman, even though the times that she had met her, she had seemed like an eccentric but lovely woman.

At the end of the funeral, the family, Clara’s university and school friends and the Coal Hill students went into the church hall for the wake. None of Clara’s friends through the Doctor went to the wake, but Ellie made a mental note to call Kate later on in the day, perhaps when they were in the hotel that they were staying at in Shoreditch.

Ellie sat at a bench at the side of the hall next to April and Courtney. They hadn’t been talking, just sitting. Neither Ellie or April were particularly good friends with Courtney, but suddenly, one day, Courtney seemed to have respect for Miss Oswald, out of nowhere (April had said in one of her very, very thorough weekly updates of Coal Hill and everything that went on).

Ellie’s phone buzzed in her pocket.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unknown Number

 

Meet me in the fields you showed me the first time I came to visit you and I will explain everything, an hour after you finish your lunch

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ellie frowned and put her phone back in her pocket, Courtney and April went home, and her mum called her over to help clean up.

She wasn’t quite sure what this text meant. Was it something to do with Clara? There was nothing else that she needed to be explained to her (apart from Maths), but why would it be sent from a private number? Was it the Doctor? It couldn’t have been. It wasn’t his style. But if it wasn’t the Doctor… then who was it?


	8. November 2015 - The Mysterious Text

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie follows the instructions on her text

November 2015

It was Wednesday. “I’m off to see Katelyn”, Ellie lied, as she left the house to find go to this field that she had read about in the text. She didn’t really have anything to lose at this point, so she thought that she should go to this field. Whoever it was had her number, and, she could call for backup if she really needed it (even though she was sure that Kate wouldn’t be to happy if she called for what turned out to be no reason, and UNIT’s youngest employee would be sure to lose her job).

She walked through the field, and turned round the corner, and saw a diner. This diner was familiar, she had been there before… but surely not! This is a diner, right in the middle of the field, which had not been there the day before… so surely… the best idea would be to enter!  
***

Ellie went inside the diner, which was empty, apart from one person with brown hair and a blue waitress’ uniform.

“But...but...but…” stuttered Ellie… “You can’t be here...You’re dead…”

It was Clara.

Clara.

Clara who died.

Two weeks and two days ago.

She had been to the FUNERAL…

But then again, this was a universe where one could jump into someone else’s time stream and become scattered across it…

That was it! She was an echo. Just an echo of her cousin.

But how could an echo know her number? She had never met an echo before in her present, and the ‘echo’ seemed to know things that only Clara would know.

And this diner! It hadn’t been there the day before when she had checked the field in the evening...which meant that it must have been a spaceship…

This Clara seemed to know what was going on from the language of her text, which meant that this Clara has died already, and there was only one species which could do anything like this.

So… the only possible explanation was…

“Time Lord Technology”.

Ellie heard a door creaking open slowly, followed by slow clapping. Ashildr.

“Well done”, she said with a patronising tone to her voice. “I can see why UNIT hired her.

“Ashildr?” Ellie asked.

“It’s…Me now”, Clara murmured, “Her name is Me”. Ellie looked at her strangely, and tilted her head to the side.

Clara went on to explain everything that happened with her death, and how she had been extracted at the moment before she died, and how she and the Doctor wiped his memory of her, and that she was now essentially immortal, and that she was now on the way back to Gallifrey “the long way round”.

Ellie ran up to Clara and gave her a hug. She didn’t know if she was going to see Clara again, so it was very possible that this was going to be her last opportunity. “Thank Philip for Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey…”

Ellie let Clara go and said “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have got mad like that. I’m still working on my temper…”

Clara sighed. “You were right… look at me now. If I hadn’t been so… stupidly reckless then I would still be...well...not basically dead…”

Ellie sighed as she came to a painful realisation. “This is gonna be the last time I see you isn’t it…”

“Well, the Doctor can’t remember me…”

“And your nearest and dearest have been to your funeral…”

“One last adventure?” Clara asked, with that impish glint in her eye that Ellie knew all too well.

Ellie narrowed her eyes, before grinning. “And you’ll be able to get me back here... now…”

“Of course! My TARDIS seems to be a lot more reliable than You Know Who’s…”

“All right then…!”

“And I should probably mention…

“...The Chameleon Circuit’s broken!”


	9. November 2009, Dinner with the Nobles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie, her gran and her brother have a rather awkward dinner with Donna and Sylvia after Donna's memory wipe

November, 2009  
Ellie had been dreading it. She knew that it had been coming for a while, but she had been putting it off for a long while. She was going to see Donna Noble again, but this time, as far as Donna was concerned, she would just be seeing some annoying kid who was a friend of her parents.

Ellie’s gran, Beryl, and Sylvia Noble had been friends at school, “back in the good old days”. They monthly met up for lunch, and Beryl insistently dragged along her grandchildren so that she could boast to Sylvia how successful her family had been. Sylvia often brought Donna too, to somehow try and win the silly competition between the old women.

***

Donna sat there, quite obviously unwillingly, as her mother nagged her again to go out and find a proper job. Ellie sat there, not talking either, as she knew that she would probably end up saying something to Donna that she would regret, subsequently killing her. She had met Donna three times in the TARDIS. Once on a trip to Pompeii (which she wished had happened before her project deadline, but never mind…), once to Shan Shen and once fighting the Daleks, on the Crucible.

After far too much small talk, Ellie’s younger brother Hugo said the one thing that Ellie had been hoping that no one was going to say. The one thing that she had been avoiding. “Auntie Sylvie, did you see the aliens?”

Ellie turned a dark shade of red. She looked at Sylvia, whose eyes were starting to brim with tears. There was silence, for a few moments, no one daring to say anything. Ellie knew that this would be it, that Donna would remember who she was, when…

“Aliens? What a load of nonsense!”, Donna Noble said with the most amount of sass and fire that she had ever seen. Ellie could see Sylvia tremble slightly as she sighed with relief, as a tear rolled down her cheek. “Load of nonsense, isn’it Mum?” Sylvia nodded a few times, very relieved.

Ellie too was happy, for dinner with the Nobles would not be such a nightmare in the future...


	10. January 2017

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ellie thinks about everything that has happened recently, before getting on the train to go to Ealing, with Maria, her cousin.

1st January 2016

Ellie sat on her bed, which she had been doing a lot of lately. It was 11am, and she had just woken up, having partied hard all night at Katelyn’s New Year party. She was excited, because for the last week of her Christmas holiday, she was going to London with her cousin Maria, to see some of Maria’s friends, in Ealing.

Ellie had met Sarah Jane and the “gang” quite a few times before. Ellie had gone to see Maria in her house way back in 2007, when there was an alien attack from a species, called the Bane, where she had met Sarah Jane who she had helped defeat the Bane.

Maria (with the exception of “Uncle” Alan”) was the only person in Ellie’s family who knew about her alien encounters apart from Clara. After an argument between Aunt Chrissie and Aunt Ellie in 1994, the sisters did not speak to each other, which meant that Clara and Maria had only met once, at their grandfather’s funeral, where the family argument was made worse, not better. The situation had got so bad that Chrissie refused to go to Aunt Ellie’s funeral after the mysterious circumstances the night before the Auton attack, sending only a card and some flowers to Dave, Ellie’s widower.

Ellie (junior) was still shaken up by the events that surrounded Clara’s death. She had been to a few planets with Clara, putting up with Ashildr (or Me now, as Clara made sure that she called her) before she was dropped home. She had not seen or heard from Clara since, though Clara promised that she would see her when she had moved far away from the rest of the family, but that she could not risk going back to the family that thought she was dead. Too many questions would be raised, and if any alien or scientist managed to find her, with the Doctor unable to remember her so therefore save her, it was agreed by Clara and Ellie that the best way to avoid an awkward/impossible situation would to be to avoid seeing each other completely.

This had left Ellie feeling alone. Halfway through December, she had got into a massive fight with April, whom she’d known since she was five. They had been best friends, and Ellie had helped April through her father’s trial, but Ellie had advised April that she should go and see her father, since she had the option, and this caused April to refuse to even speak to her. She regretted it now, realising everything that April had gone through as a result of what’d happened when she was eight, and she wish that she had advised April differently.

Not being able to speak to April, and with Clara dead, Ellie had been feeling very lonely. Ellie hadn’t known Katie long enough to be able to talk to her about everything that had gone on with the Doctor, and she didn’t want to talk to her boyfriend Sam about it because he was still grieving the loss of his brother, Rory, who had mysteriously disappeared. Sam knew about Amy’s Raggedy Doctor, the whole of Leadworth did, but he did not know the extent to which Ellie knew the man.

She had helped UNIT with a special mission regarding a lone Cyberman who was found frozen in a cave, but apart from this, had nothing to distract herself with apart from GCSEs, so she was very happy to be going to Bannerman road with Maria.  
*** (On the train) ***

“How is everything?” Maria asked.

“You know, you’re really starting to sound American”, Ellie said dryly, trying to change the subject.

Maria spotted this. “I was very sorry to hear about Clara…”

“She was YOUR cousin too, and you DIDN’T EVEN COME TO HER FUNERAL…”

“Things were complicated, you know that as well as I do. Imagine what would’ve happened if the feud started up again…”

 

“Well, that wouldn’t happen, would it? I’ll tell you why, it’s because everybody’s dead. Clara’s dead, Aunt Ellie’s dead… you lot’ve got no one left to fight with”.

Maria sat there for a moment, before saying “Your temper. Tell it to SHUSH for a second”.

“You know I get it from my mother’s side. YOUR mother’s side, and IT’S IN YOUR GENES TOO!”

“Oh, for goodness sake, you’re like Darrell Rivers from Malory Towers.” Ellie shot her an even dirtier look, before sighing and slumping back in her train seat.

“I’m sorry. Haven’t got over it yet, and have run out of people to shout at”.

Maria shot her a kind-of sympathetic smile. “Sorry. I know how much she meant to you”.

“Means”, Ellie said with a frown.

“You do realise she’s dead…”

Ellie blinked, slowly. “I’ll tell you later. We’re not completely alone right now”. Ellie buried her head in her hands, realising that it was going to be complicated to explain everything to Maria.

***

“Well, the Doctor was on Gallifrey when…”


End file.
